Website of Kamau Rashid: scholar, educator, and an advocate of kujichagulia (self-determination)

Kujichagulia

I could be mistaken, but it seems that the Western appeals to the universal, while relevant in informing a discourse on equality within the civic arena, have also served as a medium for the colonization of the ontologies and epistemologies of racialized and oppressed peoples. In this way, one might argue (and indeed, Imari Obadele did) that appeals to reform of the existing state apparatus and its default posture of coercive control towards African people, is also a ceding to that state a degree of unwarranted legitimacy.

The alternative to reform, sovereignty, that is Black nationalism, is generally regarded as both illegitimate and unrealistic. However notions of its legitimacy reside with one’s view on the basic question of whether African Americans have a right to self-determination. And history has demonstrated up until this point, and without a shadow of a doubt, that reforming America in such a way as to eradicate the vestiges of anti-Black racism within the society, its vast institutions, and its practices and beliefs continues to be an unrealistic end.

Therefore I maintain that the appeal to the universal obfuscates more than it clarifies. African people have a unique quandary, requiring a unique set of solutions. Solutions that are predicated upon cultural logics issuing forth from an African-centered orientation to reality.

I gave a short (5 min) lecture at a Kwanzaa program on Kujichagulia on the importance of symbols and celebrations. One thing that I said, that I was prompted to revisit after seeing the numerous posts about…well, I’ll simply say nonsense unworthy of further attention or discussion, is that we live in a society where we are compelled to operate at a superficial level of understanding of all things. Thus we are often encouraged to focus on individuals, things, and events that can only distract us from deepening our knowledge about ourselves and the world, as well as our practice of the values and behaviors that have the potential to make it one that is truly livable.

I like to remind myself that our minds are somewhat akin to an input-output system. The quality of my consciousness (meaning awareness) is proportional to the degree to which I invest in cultivating said awareness. Thus if I engage in activities that stimulate my ability to critically interrogate reality, then I naturally habituate and strengthen those abilities. The same is true regarding our ethical practices. If I engage in activities that reinforce my ethical reasoning and practice, then I further the internalization and augmentation of those abilities. This is why I try to pay relatively little attention to foolishness. I do pay some attention to it, enough to know where it is, where it is coming from, what it looks like, how it seduces the mind and degrades the spirit, and so forth. But to go beyond this, I fear, would give too much power to things that, in the final analysis, will fail to help me to manifest as the person that I choose to be in the world.

I consider this degree of discernment to be the foundation of what it means to live purposefully. To be ensnared by false notions is perhaps the greatest form of enslavement.

Our movement has been defined by constant and incessant acts of self-determination. Whether we are referring to the maroon tradition among enslaved Africans in the Western hemisphere, the Stono Rebellion of 1739, the declaration of Haitian independence in 1804, Denmark Vessey’s planned insurrection of 1822, Harriet Tubman’s defiant quest to free enslaved Africans, Martin R. Delany’s work in support of emigration and nationalism in the mid-1800s, Benjamin “Pap” Singleton’s support of the Black Exodusters in the 1870s and Black emigration abroad in the 1880s, Marcus Garvey’s work to empower the global African community, Drusilla Dunjee Houston’s contribution to the reclamation of African history, Carter G. Woodson’t declaration that mis-education is the dominant institutionalized form of socialization afforded to Africans in America, Kwame Ture’s 1966 call for Black Power, Black people in the U.S. recognizing themselves as an African people, the movement for Re-Africanization that ensued with great ernest in the 1960s in the context of the Black Power Movement, the Republic of New Afrika’s declaration of independence on March 31, 1968, the Black independent schools movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the creation of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations in the 1980s, and so on. We continue to engage in acts of Kujichagulia (self-determination). Declaring our commitment to reclaim our culture and restore our sovereignty are acts of self-determination.